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APPRECIATING NOLAND

EIGHTIES CHEVRONS

ALTHOUGH VASTLY DIFFERENT from his early "chevrons," to some eyes the 1980s "chevrons" (1983-87) look retrograde. They're no more retrograde than the contemporary "papers:" they differ in many ways from the '60s "chevrons." In layout the chevron image tends to be steeper sided and has a more acute point. The picture rectangle is usually more vertical than square, more panel than window.

But their import goes beyond that. The '80s "chevrons" represent Noland's first venture into overlaid colour since the "plaids", assisted now by acrylic gel. The treatment of color in and on surface dominates these pictures. They're painted in more than one layer, often on a dark ground. Repeated bands and zones no longer consist of single, relatively flat colors. Thickened and thinned paint is applied in complex overlays. An applied, chattering counterpoint of translucent gel over colored underpainting weaves the bands together with a brittle complexity. In them Noland made explicit a mastery of touch that always had been implicit. Applied drawing offsets and overrides geometry. Application sings obbligato to underpainting and layout.

The '80s "chevrons" took color into areas that would have been inconceivable in the '60s. In doing so it brought new problems. Because the color in the '60s "chevrons" is stained into the canvas itself, the the image tends not to detach from the ground. In the '80s chevrons, thick paint application leads to a potential separation of figure and ground. This is usually resolved by overpainting the surrounding ground.